Why can’t I buy fairly traded and reasonably priced clothing?

I make compromises every day with what I buy for my family. Here are some of the things I worry about: biodegradable/washable nappies, organic milk and milk products, organic veg, fair trade tea, coffee and chocolate, environmentally friendly cleaning products, fairly treated meat and sustainable fish.

If I bought the most ethical, environmental and healthy version of each of these my shopping bill would be intolerably high. But I do try and some of these I buy all the time, some only when its convenient and some barely at all. But they are all readily available in my local supermarket. Sometimes I worry about shopping in the supermarket too, but then where would I buy all my expensive higher value goods?

But how do I clothe myself and my family ethically? I buy clothes for myself, my husband (I know!) and 3 children under 5. The children are growing fast so are always needing something from pants to a whole new outfit. I buy from supermarkets and normal high street stores. Nothing that I buy is even remotely ethical. Even though I would be prepared to pay a premium to know that whoever made the clothes was paid a decent wage. I don’t want organic or designer items with ridiculous price tags. I want normal day-to-day clothes particularly for children for which I would pay maybe 20-50% more.

I know there are a few things out there. I like Howies a lot, I like the ethics of People Tree although its not really my style and I know Top Shop have a small organic/fair trade range – but the quality is appalling. Why is that? For children I simply don’t know anywhere that stocks the basics.

Ideally I would like a stamp, like we have with fair trade, organic or freedom food that says that the factory where this was produced meets minimum standards. Surely it can’t be that hard to do. Maybe the shops and supermarkets think they are doing enough – I know they all have ethical policies which they happily produce if you make a fuss. But these have been generally proved to be worthless and far removed from the situation you find on the factory floor.

Now I don’t particularly want organic or fair trade (Fair trade states that an item has to be sold by a collective rather than a company). All I want is ethical and of a similar quality to the stuff I buy now.

The situation is even more ridiculous when you compare it to what you can buy in the rest of the supermarket. I can buy a banana which is pesticide free, where all elements of the supply chain have been paid decently and where I can know the farm, the country and the transportation method by which it reaches the UK. But can I buy a child’s t-shirt where I can be assured that child labour has not been used. No. And I want to know why not.

Chocolate Fudge cake

Just like the sort you get in restaurants and very easy to boot. Serve with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce or make a chocolate frosting and serve as ‘real’ cake. Adapted from a Gordon Ramsay recipe.

Ingredients

• 125g butter (room temperature)
• 50g cocoa powder
• 225g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 3 large eggs
• 125g self raising flour

Preparation

In a small bowl combine the cocoa powder and half the sugar. Boil 100ml water. Gradually stir the boiling water into the cocoa and sugar until you get a smooth runny paste.

In another bowl beat the butter and remaining sugar until pale and creamy (use electric mixer if you’ve got one!). Add the vanilla essence. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time. Be warned this looks like scrambled eggs!

Fold in flour and stir thoroughly. Stir in the chocolate paste.

Use a large non-stick cake tin (20cm) or line the base of a non-stick one with greased greaseproof paper. Pour the mixture into the tin.

Cook at 140′c (fan) for 30-35 mins. Check after 20 mins.

Cool in the tin for 10 mins before removing to a cooling rack until totally cold.

I found this cake freezes very well too.

Colony Collapse Disorder, don’t get excited no cure yet

After watching a great BBC4 doc about CCD earlier this week all about the demise of the honey bee I have been worrying about it quite a lot.  The general problem seems to be a multitude of different issues – namely pests and pesticides that are killing off the bees.  A great many minds here and in the US have been working on it and there doesn’t seem to be one common problem.   The final consensus is that the bee is the ‘canary in the coalmine’ – our early warning sign about environmental destruction and intensive agriculture.  A scary thought.

And then only yesterday my husband said, oh its ok they’ve found a cure for that and sent me this link:

Cure for CCD

It all seemed a little bit too easy – we found a parasite that no-one else could find and fixed it.  Sadly it doesn’t seem to be a miracle cure.  In the US studies they had also found this parasite but it was by no means common to all incidents of CCD so that really appears to be it.  They’ve found a fix for one of the many many problems.

No cure for CCD

Plastic bags vs cling film

We’re all getting very careful with our plastic bags.  In the supermarket the other day, I noticed that at least 50% of shoppers had re-usable bags with them.  I always re-use and recycle any that I get, just like most of my friends.  But what do I do about cling film? Nothing.  At all.  And I use it a lot.  One roll every 3-4 weeks I think.  And obviously I just throw it away.  Its so small I hardly even notice it.

But cling film actually makes up a bigger percentage of our household waste than plastic bags (4.1% as opposed to 3.2% according to a survey by South Glos County council).   I imagine too that those non-recyclable plastic trays (in our area anyway) that contain anything from fruit to ready meals make up a far higher percentage of our plastic waste.

So why are we so obsessed with plastic bags?  I think the amount of press plastic bags has got over the last few years has been huge.  And this is having an effect.  But only on such a small aspect of our behaviour that it is now negligible.  But we feel we have been green by doing it.  Hence we allow ourselves to carry on doing other things which are far worse for the environment because we feel that we have already ‘checked that box’.

http://tinyurl.com/bessny (Monbiot)

http://tinyurl.com/clmpjz (PDF by South Glos County council)

A farm for the future

I have recently watched and been inspired by this film by Rebecca Hosking:

http://tinyurl.com/cpfye2

It is a really fascinating film about the future of farming in Britain. Rebecca has inherited a working farm but is struggling against some great obstacles as she tries to make it future proof.
The problem she highlights is absolutely huge. Absolutely all farming in the western world is totally and completely dependent on fossil fuels. Be that tractors for harvesting or the fertilizers that are derived from oil. What do we do as the fossil fuels that we depend on start to dwindle? It is inevitable that food costs will go up and possible that agriculture will have to change completely beyond recognition if we are not to starve.

From reading my description, this film sounds heavy, depressing and scare-mongering. But yet it is none of those things. Instead it is inspiring.

Rebecca chooses to explore new methods of farming and see how possible they are in a real setting on her farm. She investigates using different grasses for cattle that would enable them to stay outside all year: cutting out the need for a hay harvest. And then she talks about permaculture. I had no idea what permaculture was until I saw this. It is, if you didn’t already know, farming or gardening within a natural setting such as woodland.

Things that I found out from this film:

1. farming is the second biggest user of fossil fuels after transport

2. new methods such as GM are as dependent on fossil fuels as the old

3. organic food uses less fossil fuels as it is does not use fertilizers derived from oil, but is equally dependent on heavy machinery

4. permaculture can have a higher yield per acre than conventional farming

5. we’re screwed for cereal crops as you can’t grow them except in vast fields.  So potatoes are the future i’m afraid.

6. that apparently one day I should be retiring to a little wood somewhere.

Carbon labelling

The Carbon Trust has been pilotting a scheme to introduce a carbon footprint label on certain products.  This will give consumers the ability to make an informed choice about how much carbon has been used in the growth, manufacture and shipping of the product.

The carbon footprint of food is impossible for the normal consumer to make an informed choice about.  A good example of the contradictions involved is a tomato.  They are grown in huge heated greenhouses in the UK.  It has been shown that a tomato shipped or even flown from Spain has a smaller carbon footprint than one grown here due to the enormous heating costs.

It is something I really struggle with, as I am just guessing when I’m at the supermarket.  And due to a lack of information I tend to give up and not think about it.

If they could make a universal scheme work (this is a big if, I can see all manor of complications in the implementation of this) then I would love to see something really simple like the traffic lights scheme for calories, fat etc.  A red, orange or green light would really influence my shopping habits and help us to really find out the worst carbon offenders in our shopping basket.

Oven baked tandoori salmon

Ingredients

• 2 salmon fillets
• ½ small pot of natural yoghurt
• Juice of half lemon
• 1 thumb ginger
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• ½ tsp turmeric
• ½ tsp garam masala
• ½ tsp salt

Preparation

Grate the ginger and garlic on the fine side of the grater. Mix all the ingredients except the salmon together. Put the salmon in a plastic bag and mix in the yoghurt paste. Marinade for at least an hour. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 180′c for 20 mins.

Replace your fridge, save a power station (or six)

I’m not particularly into random factoids but I found this one pretty impressive (if its actually true of course):

“if we replaced all large domestic appliances with energy efficient ones we would provide savings of up to 3.6 TWh – the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power over 1 million UK homes for an entire year!”

This came from the time to change website: www.t2c.org.uk or http://tinyurl.com/chh9sf

Green purchases that I actually use

Recently bought a water bottle from these people:

http://www.onegreenbottle.com

and I’ve used it every time I go out.  Its a pleasing design, kids can use it too and I think I’ll buy another one for when I go to the gym (eventually).

It made me think about other green purchases I’ve made, I think I’ve probably bought quite a few.  Washable nappies were a failure sadly, as was one of those remotes that turn your devices off standby.  In fact I think the only thing that I use regularly is one of those Onya bags that rolls up really small and fits in your handbag.  Its great.

Everything else was a waste of money and more of a tax on the environment than a help.  I am now much more choosy of what I buy.

Halogen light bulbs

When we got a new kitchen last year our builder put in halogen lights – 12 of them, each at 50W.  Making a grand total of 600W of power every time we turn on the lights.  Which is a lot of the time at this time of year.  They are often on from 5pm until 11pm.  From using our electricity monitor we can see that this is the biggest drain on our electricity use.

This in itself is surprising – its not the cooker or the TV or all those devices we leave on standby its just the lights!

So what to do?  Simplest first, turn the lights off.  And we are trying, sometimes only having half of them on.  Trying to turn them off when we leave the room etc.

What I’d really like to do is replace them with LEDs.  But the technology isn’t there yet.  It turns out that a 50W LED costs £20+ each.  Thats an unacceptably large amount of money to replace them all.  See here for details:

http://www.yourwelcome.co.uk/acatalog/GU10_LED_Lamps.html

My only hope is that technology has improved vastly over the last couple of years (50W halogens were not available at all until very recently).  So if I wait a year or two more (hopefully when my existing halogens start to go!) they’ll be down to an acceptable price and available in my local B&Q.

I’m really surprised that halogens haven’t really been addressed by shops.  Our local B&Q is full of energy saving light bulbs for standard lights.  But how much of a normal house uses these now.  Not that much I’d say.  I think its just the bedrooms in our house – maybe 30% of our total lighting.  And I don’t think other people are that different.  So energy saving bulbs are a help and I definitely use them where I can.  But realistically they don’t address that much of the issue at all.  And until there is a solution for all forms of lighting (small odd sized side lights are another problem as the slightly bigger energy saving candles just don’t fit) we’re not going to make much progress.